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Digital Forensics/Network Forenesics

I attended a meeting of the British Computer Society local branch in Aberdeen last evening. It was a well attended event with a speaker (Russell May) from a company from Pasadena. The company in question specialises in the production of Foresenic software for computers. This particular talk by Russell May concerned performing forensic investigations on a computer via the network. He described how it is possible to install a Servlet on the computer which communicates with a secure server and has the ability to send back information about the contents of the hard disc (including hidden files) and also the processes that the computer is running.

This is the ultimate in ‘Big Brother’ terms as it is now possible to perform forensic investigations without having physical access to the computer. Another point was made, it is possible using this technique to examine the content of encrypted disc volumes. This is because the computer is operational and the decryption keys are all available to the servlet process.

This is not likely to find its way on to domestic PC – but it does make you think! Supposing it did then there is nothing that we can consider to be private in the digital world.

A search on Google provides access quite a bit if information on this topic.

Leisure time at the weekend.

Went for a walk near Monymusk around the Dam with some good friends. Very relaxing and took the camera and have some photos to share. See the following link

  • Click Here
  • This is the Photo which is my favourite

    This was published using iPhoto and iWeb and is hosted on a server on my home LAN. So easy to do. Very nice to have the time to just have a relaxing walk and to enjoy the county side nearby Kemnay. Need to take more opportunities to take advantage of this amenity.

    😉

  • Where did the action photo come from

    Readers who know me today might wander what the significance of the photo at the left is all about. Its a relic from my days as a teacher when my extra-curricular activity was white water canoeing. This photo was taken during a Tweed Canoe Club trip to the National Sport Centre at Nottingham where there is an artificial canoe slalom course. Its now some 18 years since I did this sort of thing – however the photo does revive some fond memories of those days.

    8 Meg ADSL operational

    When I arrived back yesterday evening I spent a short time catching up with email etc. and noticed that the performance of my link seemed vary good. On checking my router config this morning I note that the free upgrade to ADSL has been implemented which is great news. I did a speed test to compare to the performance I was getting prior to upgrade. Here are the results.

    As you can see it is better than the test published in my last post. I am coming to the view that it is necessary appreciate the importance of the term ‘up to’ when reading about ADSL services. The service I have now is ‘up to 8 Meg’ so the 1915 kb/s and 379 kb/s I see in the test must be acceptable. I can certainly feel the difference between this service and my previous service.

    I decided to do some more reading into the issue of backhaul from the local Exchange, I found the following interesting reading.

    http://www.vnunet.com/personal-computer-world/features/2168402/fix-broadband
    http://www.aaisp.net.uk/maxatm.html

    Continuing to monitor ADSL

    I have been monitoring my home ADSL account over this weekend. The results I have been seeing are fairly good ( my service is a 2 Meg service)

    See an example of the result from the test I did a few minutes ago!

    I am now getting even more concerned about the performance on my daughters broadband connection! I am now beginning to wander if there is a fault on her line (but I have done checks which seem to indicate that her line is clean) – or that it is simply the affect of congestion which is causing her problem. Her service is on 50 : 1 contention ration and I expect that it just may be the case that there people in her part of the country are making very good use of their service which would lead to poorer performance for all. Strange that ADSL leads to a point where if it is being well used by the users who are contending for a particular service that everyone would receive a much poorer performance.

    I noticed that my home ISP has now advertised an 8 Meg service at no additional cost. I have decided to apply for the upgrade and will be closely monitoring the situation once it has been applied.

    Jim